What's immediately striking about Challengers is the unabashed mellowness of it all.

My Make-Believe is a refined continuation of Santi's dubby, militarized, post-punk experimentation.

The album is a fun novelty, but as with most tributes, there's not much to keep it in rotation.

Lyrics, when employed, are simple and to the point, thoughtful but sparse enough to let the classical musicianship shine.

While it's hard to question their motives and integrity, Avocado fails to deliver the grand statement we might expect.

Regardless of Tatum’s ever-shifting musical obsessions or emotional moods, an enjoyable lightness and subtlety to the arrangements and overlapping textures draw your ear in closer.

His major-label debut after years on Def Jux feels status quo for the most part, and new labelmates will.i.am and Snoop only dilute his product with lazy cameos. But there’s still much to admire about Mur’s campaign to turn on some heads.

When they're flowing about anything but shooting people over the expensive-sounding synth-goo production, the record could pull a school bus with its teeth. But aimless, boring gunshot-laden tracks like 9mm and Gun Blast find Bone unable to let go of their dated murda-isms.

His brilliant, whispery, Gainsbourgh-like vocal delivery is replaced by base shouting, his hilarious wordplay reduced to grating, beat-poet-like observations.

The Sadies have proved themselves master instrumentalists at country and twang, and a fluid backup band able to execute any genre. Doe, who co-fronted seminal L.A. punks X, on the other hand, has a voice you could charitably call serviceable. Whether this collaboration needed to happen is debatable.

The whole idea of Philly fruitcakes Man Man releasing an album that sounds like a dusted deconstruction of Tom Waits’s Swordfishtrombones--complete with grumbling old man affectations--on the same label that releases albums by Waits is too much of a nutty coincidence not to be a cockeyed po-mo parody.

Canada’s answer to the Fab Four, Sloan, are still charming after 23 years together.

Impeccably produced, Valtari ultimately feels like two diametrically opposed albums.

Satellite feels very much like a transitional record in which Kid Koala is exploring new terrain. Not all of his tangents are successful, but his enthusiasm for stretching beyond his turntablist roots is refreshing.

Product is Sophie's debut LP, collecting four previously released singles plus four new ones in a concise introduction to a producer who has quickly crafted a style and perspective all his own.

Leave A Light On, for example, sounds an awful lot like the Rio-era ballad Save A Prayer. Unfortunately, these doppelgangers are the album's best songs, which makes you wonder why the band bothered.

Yes, the melodies are all bubble-gum lightness, but don’t worry, Raveonettes are still very dark and won’t be making inroads into top-40 radio any time soon.

Nobody Knows is a more complete, fleshed-out version of Beal’s vision, replacing his former no-fi folk with ominous, gritty blues and soul (not to mention a guest spot by Cat Power), but it’s still a work-in-progress.

There are a few too many “Get off my lawn, kids” moments, and the interludes are entirely unnecessary (hi, the Lonely Island), but as far as comebacks go, this album is anything but a non-event.

After a while the tripped-out builds can feel formulaic, but the mind-altering textures and melodic flourishes are so gorgeously realized that Luminous’s feel-good charms become hard to resist.

The songs are fast-moving clouds, riffs with drift (let's call them "driffs" for now and leave it to someone else to come up with a better term), immediately catchy and contemporary but also tastefully inflected with gazey and psychedelic sensibilities.

On the Dears’ fourth album, the Montreal melancholics take simple melodies and spin them into seamless epics.

It's unlikely that anyone will prefer the covers to the originals, but Isaak's fans will find plenty to enjoy in this rock 'n' roll love letter to a bygone era.

Cautious listeners should be warned that this is a very dark and strange album, but wrap your head around the dissonance and general creepiness and you discover one of the more startlingly original takes on 60s rhythm and blues ever put down to disc.

On his sixth album, the New York anti-folk singer/songwriter takes a step toward silencing the critics, tempering his creaky half-spoken vocals with some surprisingly sophisticated arrangements and harmonies with guests like Dr. Dog and Frances McKee of the Vaselines.

The emphasis on texture and style can obscure Dienel’s storytelling, however: it all sounds so gorgeous, you sometimes forget to listen to what she’s actually trying to say.

Rae's languid enunciation gets lost on faster tracks, and on Caramel and Night her vocal style shifts to a heavy-handed singer/songwriter coffee house/lullaby mode. Most captivating are the moments when she returns to exploring the thrill of vulnerability on Hey, I Won't Break Your Heart; emotional standoffs on Been To The Moon; and anxiety-inducing ruminations on Do You Ever Think of Me?

Lyrically, he's still clever but also much more direct, and there's greater impact because of it.